back to article Hotmail hack blamed for exposing extra-marital governor frolics

Emails from the Argentine mistress of married South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford were leaked to the press by a hacker, according to the Latin American siren at the centre of a political scandal in the US Deep South. The emails were obtained by South Carolina newspaper The State back in December but kept on ice while the …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Karma

    is a bitch!

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/24/sanford-was-harsh-critic_n_220325.html

  2. Matthew Ellen
    Black Helicopters

    Microsoft PR

    "Maria claims her account was hacked in November, a few weeks before the emails were leaked, and she reported the issue to Hotmail at the time, who helped her to recover the account."

    Sounds like the story was created to make Microsoft look good...

    Oh! The convoluted depths to which marketing departments will stoop!

  3. Winkypop Silver badge
    Badgers

    Yawn

    Wake me up in the spring...

  4. Mike 61
    Coat

    No wrongdoing

    Sure, using horsetail or any other web based e-mail service is just dumb, but the bottom line is that the Governor in question did nothing that could or should make him leave his job. Sure the voters may be pissed, but that's what elections are for. On the gripping hand, the mistress is kinda cute. And while we are on the subject, when did it come to pass that keeping a mistress was a bad thing. If I remember my history correctly it used to be the norm and quite acceptable for persons of means to keep a mistress.

    Mines the one with "yes dear, whatever you say dear" beaten into the back...

  5. kain preacher

    @ Mike 61

    'but the bottom line is that the Governor in question did nothing that could or should make him leave his job"

    Are you shitting me ?? He left the country for 5 days and didn't tell any one. Had No way of any one contacting him. Plus now it looks like he spent state money to see his mistress.

  6. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Crikey ....... whatever next . More Hookers in the White House?

    ".... is that the Governor in question did nothing that could or should make him leave his job." ... By Mike 61 Posted Tuesday 30th June 2009 13:19 GMT

    Hmmm? Being a co-conspirator in lying makes him excellent Governor material then, Mike 61? Or is hiking a known euphemism for extra-marital frolics?

  7. Eric Dennis
    Big Brother

    What do you expect?

    He's a republican. You can't be surprised by this. Only Democrats can get away with screwing around. LOL!!!

  8. Edward Clarke

    He gets extra credit...

    For being a male Republican politician who's cheating with a female instead of a rent-boy.

  9. Stephen Gray

    @ Mike 61

    I was under the impression that all email is web based, I may be wrong, I'm sure someone will put me right if I am.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    legality of publishing emails

    What's the legality of publishing emails as in this case or when of the parties involved decides to publish. Like, can I publish emails originally directed to me, to a blog or third party?

  11. Mike 61
    Flame

    Back @ cha

    @AMFM: Firstly sir, you honor me by acknowledgment of my existence, but in response, Yes, lying and/or the ability to lie straight faced makes him a perfect politician, although most of the time euphemisms are used such as "omitting key facts", or "great salesman", instead of the street level "liar". But this particular lie is one that was forced on him by societal norms that not everyone agrees with. The lie of being polite to those easily offended by things that are really none of their business.

    @kain: The guy could have went missing for a month with no one noticing, as a governor he plays almost no role in anything anyone outside of his home state cares about, and has very little to do with anything that goes on IN his state. His only mistake as far as I can see is that he forgot to check his e-mail and block out his calendar for that time period. And as far as spending state money to visit his mistress, well, I guess since he works for the state any money he spends would technically be state money, but nobody complains that he spends state money to eat, drink, or spend time with his other female (wife).

    @all: If he actually did something that damaged his state in a measurable way, then by all means nail the F***er to the cross, but if all he did was slip away for a few days to bang his mistress, then leave the guy alone, let his wife take care of it, if she chooses to do so.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Troll

    @Stephen Gray

    Technically no, what about mail sent around an intranet? There's no web service there. I'm fairly sure the statement mean web-based services like Hotmail, not internet email in general. Probably.

  13. J 3
    IT Angle

    @Stephen Gray

    "I was under the impression that all email is web based, I may be wrong, I'm sure someone will put me right if I am."

    You are wrong.

  14. J 3
    Flame

    Seriously now...

    Well, it shouldn't matter much what the guy does in his private life, as long as it's not illegal -- like using public money for private ends -- as long as he does his job well. Maybe disappearing from the State of SC for a few days qualifies as being lousy at his job, so let them decide that.

    That said, it's always good to see the hypocrites (aka Republicans, although they can be found in various amounts everywhere) paying for their loud mouths. As someone mentioned, this one deviated from the rather common gay lover affair and/or drug pattern that characterizes these conservative figures (Ted Haggard is my favorite one, heh, but Larry Craig is not bad either).

    Fire because, if there was a hell, they would quite surely be going there.

  15. h 6
    Thumb Down

    Crikey!

    If Sanford resigns, the Gov of my state will Bauer be the foolish 110 mile per hour speeding, red light running, plane crashing "SC2" - Andre Bauer. Good lord that's scary.

  16. John Stirling

    @Stephen Gray

    You're wrong (but you knew that would happen didn't you?).

    My email comes in by port 25 smtp, then makes it's way to my computer by port 143 imap. Some people use port 110 pop3 - or even more obscure protocols

    At no point do I use any port 80 (Http - or more loosely and commonly 'web') traffic to get my email. Some people do, but not everyone

    The world wide web ('web') is a protocol/application driven by the hypertext/hyperlink concept pioneered by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in his seminal 1989 paper.

    It sits on top of the internets pipes, and might even travel through them - if the pipes are bigger then bigger pictures can get through, or something.

  17. Goat Jam
    Boffin

    @Stephen Gray

    As mentioned by others, you are wrong. I suspect you are making the relatively common mistake of equating the web with the internet. The two are not the same thing.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Additional Pedanticism

    All those high-and-mighty people who are (correctly) berating Stephen Gray for not being aware of the distinction between the Web and the Internet are let down slightly by the lack of captialisation used. The Web and the Internet are proper nouns (i.e. names) and therefore must be capitalised.

    And yes, I am from the UK, so I use -ised and not -ized as the suffix.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Webmail != Internet

    Unless you use Microsoft OS's, in which case everything you have on your machine may as well be cleartext on the Web.

    Unless your email is travelling on a completely isolated network with NO physical links to an Internet-linked network, you CANNOT be 100% certain your mail is not going out onto the Web. So anybody working for a company who claim that their email is "intranet only" might like to ask exactly how those running the service can be sure that their traffic does not, at any time, touch the WWW (here's a clue - if you can receive emails from people outside your organisation, you ain't isolated, let alone "secure").

    Oh, and hope that some idiot doesn't attach a wireless router to your unlinked network so they can use thier laptop on the other side of the room... sometimes an "air gap" is not all it's cracked up to be, is it Phil?

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